Wanwien, Your garden should be designed for your site and it's conditions, light, moisture, and use. I think a cookie cutter stamp garden kind of goes against the philosophy of a Japanese garden.

Welcome to our forum, glad you posted and asked about this. Perhaps Don and Edzard can explain, better than I have, why this type of designing is not a good thing to pursue when planning your Japanese garden.

There are two articles recently published on the front page of JGO. One deals with the essential relationship between architecture and garden, and the other gives a rare view from an apprentice to a Master Japanese gardener. Both would be a good read for you i think.

Then in the forum, you will see many references to the request of the site influence to the design as June describes. Hope this helps!